Wee wizzards and late nights...

I confess I'm addicted to Harry Potter. Addicted. I bought the new book first thing Saturday morning, less than 12 hours after its release, and have 200 pages left as of now -- Monday at lunchtime. Mind you, I also spent 8 hours sleeping, 7 hours driving, and then another 6 hours sleeping. Those things were inevitable, I'm afraid.

Driving home last night to Boston along the Merritt Parkway, I was wondering who it was that would get the axe in this volume, but didn't want to know. You see, with every page I read, I come another page closer to the bittersweet end of the book. If I finish it, it's over. I have to wait another 2 years to find out what becomes of Harry and Hogwarts! Does he finally defeat Voldemort? I'll be thirty before I know, and that is mildly depressing.

The book itself is sublime. Each chapter unravels a little more of the Harry mystery with full-blown drama and a smidgen of sexual tension. Yes, 16 year old romance is in the air, and boy do those kids throw some tantrums about it.

But the point of my story is this -- every once in a while something small comes along and lets you fall into a fantasy world for a few hours where the fate of the world is in the hands of a young wizzard, not an old cronie in the White House, and like in James Bond, we are all rooting for Britain to prevail.